With Pen In Hand, Fuentes Tries To Explain Mexico's Complexity

June 15, 1999|By Judy Hevrdejs, Tribune Staff Writer.

Mention Carlos Fuentes' name and, for many, "Old Gringo," that 1989 Gregory Peck-Jane Fonda film, comes to mind. For others, it is Fuentes' novels -- "The Death of Artemio Cruz," "The Buried Mirror" -- or any of the other books, short stories and essays penned by the award-winning Mexican author, journalist and diplomat that have earned him a place among the world's literary lions.

Plays and playwright are rarely mentioned in the same sentence with Carlos Fuentes. He would like to remedy that.

"Last night, I was seeing a remarkable tape that was sent to me from Siberia of a play of mine on the conquest of Mexico that is being produced in Russia," said Fuentes, of his "Ceremonies at Dawn." "It is touring Siberia with a cast of 55 and the most extraordinary movable set. . . . I thought I was seeing a film by Eisenstein. The figures -- they resembled Ivan the Terrible. There was something extremely powerful about the language and the figures."

Fuentes, obviously delighted with the production, hopes one day it will be produced in America. It has been 17 years since "Orchids in the Moonlight," one of several plays he has written, was staged in the United States.

Until "Ceremonies" finds a stage, Fuentes' agenda remains packed. There was a Chicago visit last month that included a sold-out reading from his most recent novel, "The Years with Laura Diaz," at the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum during Del Corazon Mexican Performing Arts Festival. About 300 people lined up for signed books and photo ops with the Mexican man of letters. And there was his appearance at the First Spanish Language Conference, a gathering here of linguistic experts, writers and academicians.

His visit here was short: Enough time to get together with friends. To walk the city. To let his senses take it in.

"I love walking and discovering cities. I go to museums. I go to bookshops; I am enamored of book shops. I like to see what they are offering. I go to lots of movies and to theater. I have had wonderful experiences in Chicago at the opera. . . . And the architecture is so beautiful in Chicago. Just to move around and admire the buildings is extraordinary," he said during a chat at the Drake Hotel, where he always stays because, "It makes me feel I am in Chicago."

It is no wonder that two watches -- one set to the time of the city he is visiting, one to the time in Mexico -- encircle his left wrist. "So I know when to call my wife and mother-in-law," he said with a laugh.

And probably the only way to keep this certified member of the global village in the correct time zone. Born 70 years ago, the son of a Mexican diplomat, Fuentes spent part of his childhood in the United States and his teen years in Latin America, including a stint at Mexico City's Colegio Mexico where he performed in student theatrical productions. He has lived in Latin America and Europe, served as Mexico's Ambassador to France in the mid-'70s and now divides his time between homes in Mexico and London.

No matter how busy he gets, there is always the writing. Always in notebooks. Always in long hand.

"For me, there are still no computers," said Fuentes, dismissing typewriters as well. "For me it is like using a condom. There is a distance with a computer. I write by hand. I need the contact of the hand, and the pen and the paper and the smell and the touch and everything that goes with it. . . . With a pen, I feel a sensuality and joy in writing that is lost whenever I use a mechanical device."

Such was the birth of "Laura Diaz." Already out in Spanish, the English translation is in the works with Farrar, Straus and Giroux publishing the novel, probably in the fall of 2000.

It is, said Fuentes, "a history of a certain time of Mexico, the history of a woman at a certain period in Mexico," culminating in 1968 with the tragedy of Tlatelolco, the massacre of students in Mexico City's Plaza of Three Cultures. The book is told from the viewpoint of a woman, explained Fuentes, with Diaz discovering herself while Mexico is falling apart.

"The falling apart of the systems in Tlatelolco in 1968 is really a turning point for Mexican history, for Mexican society, for Mexican life in general," he said. "The system showed it had no responses to the demands of the young men and women that were educated in the ideals of democracy and freedom and participation."